Yes, the change had already been taking hold, but if you look at this page you'll see a table of voting in the South and you will see that before 1968, there had been a strong Democrat presence and with the changing culture in the Democrat party on the lead up to 1968 and the CRA in 1964, there was a relatively rapid switch to Republican support:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_SouthThe obvious exception was Carter, but that was after Nixon, which is rather telling.You'll also notice that Republicans are very sparsely represented as governors before the 60s and things have slowly changed, reflecting a slow change in voting allegiance.And to quote a line from that page:

According to a quantitative analysis for the National Bureau of Economic Research, racism played a central role in the decline in relative white Southern Democratic identification

neilsimon wrote:Yes, the change had already been taking hold, but if you look at this page you'll see a table of voting in the South and you will see that before 1968, there had been a strong Democrat presence and with the changing culture in the Democrat party on the lead up to 1968 and the CRA in 1964, there was a relatively rapid switch to Republican support:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Solid_SouthThe obvious exception was Carter, but that was after Nixon, which is rather telling.You'll also notice that Republicans are very sparsely represented as governors before the 60s and things have slowly changed, reflecting a slow change in voting allegiance.And to quote a line from that page:

According to a quantitative analysis for the National Bureau of Economic Research, racism played a central role in the decline in relative white Southern Democratic identification

But there was no slow switch, and no shift at or after 1968. The Democrat support has not gone down since the 1950s. I guess I just don't understand how one party can go from 90% to 25% in a single election cycle? You focus on the 1968 CRA (even though more republicans supported it than Democrats), but the data doesn't match the theory. Something big happened in the 1940s to shift the political allegiances that dramatically! I don't know enough about American history to even guess as to what that would be. Can you imagine if the Conservatives in say Lethbridge, Alberta went from 80% to 25%, and then stayed there for 70+ years. I just can't figure out what happened here.

Glacier wrote:...But there was no slow switch, and no shift at or after 1968. The Democrat support has not gone down since the 1950s.

The results suggest otherwise.

I guess I just don't understand how one party can go from 90% to 25% in a single election cycle? You focus on the 1968 CRA (even though more republicans supported it than Democrats)

No, that's not true about more Republicans supporting the Act than Democrats. House Democrats for 152 House Republicans for 138. Senate Democrats for 46 Senate Republicans for 27. There were more Democrats voting against the bill, and as a % of party representation, more Republicans voted for the bill, but that's an over simplified portrayal of the results. The thing is that this is really an example of Simpsons Paradox when we look at the % divide. For instance Northern Democrats were more likely to vote in favour of the bill than Northern Republicans (House: 94% vs. 85%, Senate: 98% vs 84%) and Southern Democrats were more likely to vote in favour of the bill than Southern Republicans (House: 7% vs. 0%, Senate: 5% vs. 0%). Basically, this is one of those things that people who want to use it to portray Democrats badly keep trotting out, but hand the numbers to a statistician and they'll give you a more complete picture.

, but the data doesn't match the theory. Something big happened in the 1940s to shift the political allegiances that dramatically! I don't know enough about American history to even guess as to what that would be. Can you imagine if the Conservatives in say Lethbridge, Alberta went from 80% to 25%, and then stayed there for 70+ years. I just can't figure out what happened here.

Thoughts?

The numbers I have suggest the relative slow change from Democrat to Republican which certainly had started before the 60s but when we look at presidential voting, essentially flipped like a switch after 1964. Where are you getting your numbers?

neilsimon wrote:The numbers I have suggest the relative slow change from Democrat to Republican which certainly had started before the 60s but when we look at presidential voting, essentially flipped like a switch after 1964. Where are you getting your numbers?

I googled them. Here's something interesting when looking at 1968 to 2016, BOTH republicans and democrats have improved their share of the vote since 1968!

Digging deeper this is because there is less support from 3rd parties over time. Now in 1968, there was a third party that took 1/3 of the votes in southern states like South Carolina. This was probably a mix of racists and southerners who wanted to give their region more clout in Washington. During the Clinton years, Ross Perot took 12% of the vote during his first term and 6% the second term.

Just ignoring 1968 when there was a large 3rd party showing, the trends are as you say! A slight decline in Democrat numbers and a slight increase of Republican numbers each election (on average). Therefore, the theory does match the data here! I'm sure there are many factors, but certainly this supports the theory that the racists have been switching parties over time, or that people are switching as they become less racist.

Glacier wrote:...I googled them. Here's something interesting when looking at 1968 to 2016, BOTH republicans and democrats have improved their share of the vote since 1968!

68present.png

Digging deeper this is because there is less support from 3rd parties over time. Now in 1968, there was a third party that took 1/3 of the votes in southern states like South Carolina. This was probably a mix of racists and southerners who wanted to give their region more clout in Washington. During the Clinton years, Ross Perot took 12% of the vote during his first term and 6% the second term.

Just ignoring 1968 when there was a large 3rd party showing, the trends are as you say! A slight decline in Democrat numbers and a slight increase of Republican numbers each election (on average). Therefore, the theory does match the data here! I'm sure there are many factors, but certainly this supports the theory that the racists have been switching parties over time, or that people are switching as they become less racist.

You keep using one state, which is not a fair representation of the South. Additionally, the assumption that racism, as it impacts voting is becoming significantly less common is just that, an assumption. Finally, to assume that a change in voting toward Republican candidates is in some way a response to changing racism in Southern states is a huge stretch and certainly not one supported by any expert opinion I have seen.

neilsimon wrote:You keep using one state, which is not a fair representation of the South. Additionally, the assumption that racism, as it impacts voting is becoming significantly less common is just that, an assumption. Finally, to assume that a change in voting toward Republican candidates is in some way a response to changing racism in Southern states is a huge stretch and certainly not one supported by any expert opinion I have seen.

In the old days, the Democrats would win in a landslide with the KKK, Jim Crow, and segregation. No party today could win even the most racist state today with this overt racism, that's why I think it's in decline.

Your opinion is that racism hasn't declined in 50 years, and that the racists are slowing leaving the Democrats over to the Republicans, hence the slow shift over time, correct? When do you think the crossover point occurred? 1980? 1990? What do you think the ratio is at today? 80% of racists are Republicans to 20% among Democrats? 100% to 0%? 60% to 40%?

The idea that the racists switched sides over time is widely received, but I've never heard of anyone saying racism in the south is not in decline before. Maybe the far left antifa types and neo-Nazis would say that, but even among the regular left and the regular right, it well understood that the south, while having a long way to go, is far less racist than it was when it was acceptable to have slaves.

Now, I'm open minded enough to accept that the minority opinion can be right, so I will not dismiss your views out of hand. In fact, the data I've supplied matches your theory. The reason I picked one state is that I didn't have time to look at others. I'll like at others when I find the time, and post the results here.

In the 1948 election there was a split among the Democrats. The guy running as the Dixiecrat, wanting to take the nation back to segregation, Jim Crow, and the KKK won over 71% of the votes in many states. (wow!)

Then in 1952 the Democrats re-united, but it seems that the racists had to chose between the less of two evils ... no, wait... the greater of two evils, neither of which wanted to turn the clock back. (Granted, states rights were a major plank of his platform, so not sure if all 71% were racist.)

The 1948 election had broken party loyalty, so it seems that many of the racists switched to the Republicans at that time, possibly because they championed states rights or more socially conservative ideas. I don't know enough to say way, but in any case, the trends lines have been relatively stable since then.

^^Are you perhaps putting too much weight on racism as a factor in voting? For example, folk looking back on the recent Canadian election results could suggest people who voted Conservative did so because they were opposed to Trudeau's promise to open the gates to refugees, and therefore racist. There were several sensible reasons people weren't happy with that promise, not the least of which was the potential for refugees who'd already been waiting being set back. But I'd suggest most Conservative voters prioritized several other issues over immigration.

In the southern states, there were probably a broad number of reasons for people to vote as they did. The economy has always been a priority for conservative voters. In the southern US the economic system was affected by integration, muddying the waters, but I'm not sure you can use how people voted as a measure of racism.

You are correct. Racism was only one part of it. neilsimon claims the racists switched sides in 1968 or there abouts, but the data doesn't really support this. There was no inflection point then. If you watch Hillary's America, you learn that KKK members of the Democratic Party did not switch sides. Of the 100 or so most prominent KKK members, only 3 switched sides later on. The rest died as Democrats, and most as ardent racists.

Perhaps the racists have been switching over time time, but I would maintain that a better explanation would be that the south is far less racist today, so instead of racists switching sides, the modern Democrats are not racist like their old Democrats so that now neither party is all that racist.

neilsimon might argue that the Republicans are more racist, but I think they're less so than 1968. I mean, if they had a vote today on the civil rights bill, you'd probably get unanimous support, unlike in 1968.

Last edited by Glacier on Aug 24th, 2017, 7:50 am, edited 1 time in total.

I didn't find the South racist while I was there. Granted, it wasn't for a particularly long while, but it was during the early days of the Confederate Flag uproar. The little bit of "demonstrating" by people that happened at a public event we attended (bit of a pro-flag whoop up zipped up the street during a 4th of July celebration) was met with a wee bit of eye-rolling, a few grins and dismissive head-shakes, and a whole lot of indifference. Not one person in the massive mixed crowd we were in seemed interested one way or the other.

On the other hand, the "news" showed a very different South than the one we were experiencing. Dramatic tension all over the place, according to them. We sure didn't see any of that.

We'd been reading the bio's on some of the statues commemorating Confederate leaders, and noted how much some of them had done to build the community (and country) prior to the Civil War. It's interesting to me that these people are judged on which side they ended up fighting for, regardless of why. To my mind, it's always been a little overly simplistic to make it all about good (those freeing the slaves) versus evil (those who owned slaves, regardless of how well they treated them). Seen strictly through the prism of owning another person, it's easy to say "that's evil!" but these were completely different times. Although it's difficult to imagine genuinely good people thinking beating a slave or separating their families as "acceptable behaviour", I can certainly understand how those with a genuine sense of responsibility and care in providing for the people who did the work in exchange for decent food and decent housing didn't think of themselves as "evil".

As I understand it, many of the decently-treated slaves had far more difficult life after the Civil War ended, because it was so difficult to find work to feed themselves and their families. The backlash of unintended consequences created problems for them, too, in some cases greater distress than they'd ever experienced as slaves. When we look at things from a perspective of what's best for the masses (freedom from slavery, in this case), we often forget there are a lot of individuals who are negatively impacted by otherwise positive actions (those who now had to fend for themselves in a world where people of colour still had little to no status, and the entire economy had been turned upside down).

Guess I just find it difficult to see any issue as though it happened in a vacuum. Life's not like that.

rustled wrote:^^Are you perhaps putting too much weight on racism as a factor in voting? For example, folk looking back on the recent Canadian election results could suggest people who voted Conservative did so because they were opposed to Trudeau's promise to open the gates to refugees, and therefore racist. There were several sensible reasons people weren't happy with that promise, not the least of which was the potential for refugees who'd already been waiting being set back. But I'd suggest most Conservative voters prioritized several other issues over immigration.

In the southern states, there were probably a broad number of reasons for people to vote as they did. The economy has always been a priority for conservative voters. In the southern US the economic system was affected by integration, muddying the waters, but I'm not sure you can use how people voted as a measure of racism.

Also being against the niqab or against more immigration is not racist. Islam is not a race, and a sizable percentage of immigrants are white. The first question is the only question that could be used as a gauge of racism.

It is well known that people don't always 'speak their minds', and it is suspected that people don't always 'know their minds'. Understanding such divergences is important to scientific psychology.This web site presents a method that demonstrates the conscious-unconscious divergences much more convincingly than has been possible with previous methods. This new method is called the Implicit Association Test, or IAT for short.In addition, this site contains various related information. The value of this information may be greatest if you try at least one test first...

This IAT often reveals a relative link between humanities and females and between science and males.

Skin-tone

Skin-tone (Light Skin-Dark Skin IAT).This IAT requires the ability to recognise light and dark-skinned faces. It often reveals an automatic preference for light-skin relative to dark-skin.

Weight

Weight (Fat-Thin IAT).This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of people who are obese and people who are thin. It often reveals an automatic preference for thin people relative to fat people.

Countries (interesting)

Countries ('Canada-United States' IAT). This IAT requires the ability to recognise photos of national leaders and other national icons. The results revealed by this test provide a new method of appraising nationalism.

Age

Age (young-old IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish old from young faces. This test often indicates that people have automatic preference for young over old.

Sexuality

Sexuality (Gay-Straight IAT).This IAT requires the ability to distinguish words and symbols representing gay and straight people. It often reveals an automatic preference for straight people relative to gay people.

Race

Race (Black-White IAT). This IAT requires the ability to distinguish faces of European and African origin. It indicates that most people have an automatic preference for white over black.

^^If I'm understanding this correctly, when you do this test, and it turns out you have the ability to distinguish between, say, faces of people with African and European origin, this means you have a preference for one or the other, rather than merely the ability to distinguish those characteristics which are more common to one than the other? This seems a dangerous supposition.